Thursday, 16 February 2017

In order to stay in this competitive business environment,
it is important that organizations continuously improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of their production methods. And this is determined by the
effectiveness and efficiency of the equipment used. Total Productive
Maintenance (TPM) is one of the major concepts and key operational activities
of quality management systems. It is the system of maintaining and improving
production and quality through efficient equipment, machines, processes and
employees. There needs to be collective responsibility of operators,
supervisors and workers to achieve the goal of TPM, which aims at optimizing
overall performance of the organization to produce outstanding results. By
implementing TPM, the equipment and productivity of the plant can undergo
massive transformation because TPM focuses on keeping all equipment in top
working condition to avoid breakdowns and delays in the manufacturing process.
Therefore, the equipment is maintained and improved to reduce costs, thus
increasing productivity. Hence, with TPM, output is maximized with minimized
input.

History of TPM

TPM was introduced in Japan in the year 1951. However,
Nippondenso was the first company to introduce this preventive maintenance in
1960. Preventive maintenance is where operators produce goods using machines, with
a special maintenance group dedicated with the work of maintaining the
machines. But, Nippondenso started facing problems of requiring more
maintenance personnel. Therefore, the company decided that the routine
maintenance of equipment will be carried out by the operators themselves. (This
is autonomous Maintenance – one of the features of TPM.) Therefore, the
collaboration of preventive maintenance and maintainability improvement resulted
in productive maintenance, which aimed at maximizing plant and equipment
effectiveness while reducing costs. This is how Nippondenso became the first
company to obtain the TPM certification. If you are looking for such
certification too, you can get in touch with TQMI to provide you with the
finest and most professional TPM Training in India.

Objectives of TPM

·As mentioned above, one of the main objectives
of TPM is to improve the productivity and performance of the organization. To
achieve this, it is important for the entire workforce to collaborate. Apart
from the workers, effective leadership is also of great importance to implement
TPM in the right manner. Proper support from top management makes TPM truly
effective with the outcomes resulting in zero breakdowns, zero defects, and
zero accidents.

·TPM is also centered to increase the overall
equipment effectiveness of plant equipment by investing in maintenance. It
detects and identifies the six big losses, prioritize them, and eliminate the
causes of these losses. (You can learn about the six big losses in detail
further down the blog.)

·Other objectives include avoiding wastage in the
rapidly changing environment, producing goods of high quality, and reducing
costs.

Six Big Losses

TPM deals with the ‘Six Big Losses’ to provide cost
effectiveness in a business organization. The overall equipment effectiveness
is the multiplication of performance, availability, and quality – each of which
has two associated losses, thus making them six in total.